Slashdot Mirror
Why Drones Could Save Door-To-Door Mail Delivery (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Online shopping aside, people don't have as many physical items to mail as they used to, which is largely the reason why Canada Post announced it would be phasing out door-to-door mail delivery. Motherboard reports: "The corporation is exploring future use of drone technology to make deliveries, according to a report from the Canadian Press. At this point, Canada Post is engaging in a 'proper exercise,' a spokesperson told the Canadian Press, adding that the project is in its earliest, experimental stages. According to Graham Scott, the deputy editor of Canadian Business, even if mail-delivering drones remain a theoretical concept for now, it's inevitable they'll be considered as a way to drive costs down. There are many good reasons why mail delivery drones may never get off the ground. For one thing, current technology limits them to delivering one item of post at a time, which is tremendously impractical. But, as we've seen with the rolling out of community mailboxes -- a program that was put on hold earlier this year when the review was launched -- the invisible hand of the market is always looking to drive costs down. So don't count out flying robot deliveries for good. From a manager's perspective at least, drones have their advantages. They don't suffer from dog bites, and they (ideally) don't deviate from their routes. 'Drones don't twist their ankle, they don't get tired, and they don't form a union.' said Scott." In 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the company is working on a service called "Prime Air" to deliver packages by autonomous octocopter drones within 30 minutes of hitting the "buy" button. The Guardian reported last year that Amazon has been testing its drone delivery service at a secret site in Canada, following repeated warnings by the e-commerce giant that it would go outside the U.S. to bypass what it sees as the U.S. federal government's lethargic approach to the new technology.
Which now require the operator to have an unaided line of sight to the drone at all times.
For example, the lawsuits from people who are suing because a mail deliver drone went out of control and crashed thru a huge window, or hit their 3 year old kid. What is the cost to find the drones that malfunction and crash in places that are hard to get to. They will need to recover the mail so it can still be delivered.
Sounds like a great idea, but honestly, doesn't seem like it's going to work as well as they want it to.
Be seeing you...
"Drones don't twist their ankle, they don't get tired, and they don't form a union."
Well, human employees don't fall from the sky and cause property damage, injury and death.
--say, doesn't Amazon do most of their business Christmas season anyway? That may be a feature...
Build homes with mail delivery chimneys.
what happens when its freezing rain? i could see this working in pheonix or vegas.. but i cant imagine any mail getting delivered in the winter..
Autonomous vehicles will bring the packages/mail into a certain range and depending on location a drone or bot will get out of the autonomous vehicles to do the final delivery. I can see moving forward where places will have drone/bot delivery slots for mail, packages and food deliveries.
Stop putting junk mail (literal trash, it goes right in the bin) into my mailbox! Seriously, it's >95% of the mail I receive. I get maybe 2 actual pieces of mail that I want/need every month.
Here's a better, low-tech solution. Only deliver the real mail, say once every week. You do rolling delivery across different regions of a city/county/whatever (i.e. the day you get mail delivered is different depending on where you are). That's it, you've just cut costs significantly, with little-to-no loss of quality of service. Actually, the service is better, because I don't have to clean trash out of my mailbox all the time.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
A lot of the discussion on the problems with using drones seems to assume the drone will go directly to the customer. It seems several of these issues could be addressed by having a delivery or courier meet the drone half way and then performing the actual direct to customer delivery. This would reduce the number of times a delivery person visits home base while they make multiple deliveries a day where the items aren't all available at the beginning of the day. While Amazon Now would be example of such a service where an order can be placed in the middle of the day that has a 2 hour ETA, I really think the big area drones make become invaluable is with food delivery. The restaurant would have a designated location on the roof for a container designed for the drone to pick up. It would then locate the delivery truck via GPS and drop off on a roof designed to lock-in the container. If the system is done right, the drone may even be able to drop off while the delivery truck is moving at low speeds.
So when you have very windy days, what happens?
Also, for delivery in crime areas, how does the drone open your screen door and put the package in between your front door when you aren't home?
What about winter weather, when it's blustery, snowing hard - are they just going to sod off a delivery when there's only clear weather?
And during thunderstorms, are the packages going to be water proof? How much is the added cost to make it not only delivered whenever the weather allows it, but also to ensure that the package itself can withstand the elements) no more cardboard).
Need it overnight? Well, that's going to increase in cost cause when they fire folks so drones can do the job, the last guy left is going to be real expensive to go the last mile.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
We have drones deliverying drones to other drones via an autonomous vehicle and humans lethargically watching Game of Thrones s99e02.
No work anymore for the less gifted with an IQ of 110 and less.
Paradise, here we come!
> are the packages going to be water proof? How much is the added cost to make it not only delivered whenever the weather allows it, but also to ensure that the package itself can withstand the elements) no more cardboard).
Plastic Bag
> What about winter weather, when it's blustery, snowing hard
You may have noticed the airport doesn't get shut down all that more often than the streets do. We're not talking about little toy drones that can barely carry a Go-Pro, these are big ones.
Just wait at mailbox to collect.
If you want a non-union courier, you can already use Fedex! But mysteriously, they're not 1/3 of the cost of UPS and USPS to customers. Maybe they're just pocketing all those extra savings? But wait, all those extra profits from charging market rates yet saving 2/3 of their costs also don't seem to be getting passed along to shareholders, because UPS is nearly triple Fedex's dividend yield. So what ever could some of the reasons for this? Hmmmm...
Do people just not understand physics? Do they honestly really think drones could take over package delivery?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Go ahead. Call FedEx and say you want them to swing by your house every day just in case you have outgoing mail. Tell them volume will be very low. Tell them you won't sign a contract. And tell them you're willing to pay fifty cents per one ounce parcel to be sent anywhere in America. The US parcel service isn't afraid of change, they've embraced every bit of cost saving technology possible. But there are millions of Americans that the internet still doesn't reach. People too (literally) retarded, too poor or just unwilling to buy PC's and people too poor or too disabled to walk to the nearest parcel delivery store. (hundreds of miles for a few, by the way)
Okay I wrote all that before I clicked the link: it's a bad link. Canada is actually using community boxes which require a short walk. Less ideal but it still preserves the principle of the thing. My point is the USPS is the last remaining government service that's keeping millions of Americans from being completely priced out of being able to effectively communicate with the world. It's also offering a service no one else can. Government mail delivery won't be obsolete until another company can actually match its costs (and not by cutting services)
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
One of the dangers is how it can be abused.
For example, if I were in charge of ISIS terror operations, I would now be researching the feasibility of delivering semtex parcels to e.g. veteran's homes in the US by drone. The addresses I can buy on the Internet, drones are available, and painting one in Amazon colours will ensure it doesn't attract a lot of attention when it takes off. The "payload" would have to be a fairly powerful explosive because of the drones' limited carrying capacity, so something like semtex would be preferred. Now, acquiring semtex locally or smuggling it into the US without getting caught (let alone operating a network in the US to deliver it to the "operators") will be a problem, but what have we got dedicated followers for, right? We can afford operational losses, as long as at least a few shipments get through.
Or a targeted release of anthrax or small-pox, or whatever you've got.
I really wouldn't need to score many 'hits' to unleash a huge wave of publicity, would I?
Even three to five "hits" would compromise people's sense of personal security in their very homes, and lead to a nation-wide outcry. Besides, the operator may well be secretly pleased we're only asking him to risk arrest and pilot a drone, not to detonate the parcel while it's strapped to his butt, so it might be easier to get volunteers. Not bad for a relatively cheap and simple terrorist operation, eh?
Terrorism threats will be with us for years to come, so let's be a little cautious and also consider what new windows of vulnerability we may be opening up here, Ok?
Just owls
-- Make America hate again!
During adverse weather, your government actually will shut down the streets?
Yes, they will; even major freeways. I was on the 401 a few years back when part of it was shut down due to a winter storm. Traffic wasn't moving, so I got out of my car and went to talk to the folks in front of me. Also read a chapter of my book. All this on a road that normally sees 100+km/h traffic 24/7/365.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
And wait until the terrorists deliver bombs.
I find it utterly stupid to look at flying drones for such a task rather than looking at walking drones. Keeping in the air mail is much more energy hungry than walking, it is subject to winds and bad weather and so on. While a walking drone has its limitations too, it is much less limitative than a flying drone for the same task. It seems the Jettson's syndrome is stricking back again.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Unfortunately, Santa Claus already has a patent for this. . . apparently along with elves he also employs some trolls. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Let's see how "Believe me" works for Trump.
Canada Post mail walkers are working on a contract that expired in 2011. This is just another ploy of the management to get the workers to agree to a 30% slash in wages http://bc.ctvnews.ca/canada-po...
Sounds like a terrible idea personally.
Not that the postman or delivery drivers don't just lob things over my fence if they can't find a place to put it already, but a drone trying to navigate into people's property, identifying a door or entrance and that it's the correct one (hard enough for humans where large shared houses are concerned), and getting a way to leave it somewhere without dropping it on the cat, smashing into the patio, or having a small child run straight into its blades because of the novelty of the thing? It's a huge task.
To be honest, once you're there it's really just a matter of texting the delivery recipient and getting them to come out and collect the parcel from a box on the side of the van anyway (and you can at least check they have a right to it by making them swipe the original payment card or similar before it will release).
If they aren't in, does it really matter beyond leaving it or taking it away and coming back later if the process is automated? The reason delivery hours are so useless is because those are the working hours of the people doing the delivering. An autonomous system that can text you and say "Are you going to be in in 20 minutes to collect your parcel?" and assuming a default no without a reply, or allow you to accept or reschedule will actually bring it to you WHILE YOU'RE AT HOME at any time of the day or not, at your convenience, even if there's a last minute change.
Pissing about trying to land drones on people's doorsteps from a mobile van full of parcels is really just a waste of parcel space in comparison, let alone the sheer hassle. You can barely fly a decent sized drone in most cities anyway, you can't fly it over people's heads, you can't fly it near buildings, etc. (P.S. There are REASONS for that - I've built drones with schoolchildren and you can do surprising damage with even the most sturdy of drones). Programming dozens of them to deliver any kind of sizeable parcel while moving around the city full of people (Skyscrapers? What are you going to do, land on their balconies?)? It's insane.
Automated delivery vehicle, sure. We're 99% of the way there. Just build an electric van with auto-drive and satnav and a "bank dropbox" on the back with a credit card reader to open it up. Secure. Existing tech. Practical works.
Drones running around neighbourhoods trying to drop parcels like a human? Not even close.
If a person's mailbox is not on their own property, I can easily see littering becoming a big problem, as people will often discard unwanted mail, which would end up becoming a major pain for those living in any private properties that may happen to be conveniently closer to the mailbox than those that are further away, because they surely don't want litter all over their lawns. It's only sometimes barely controlled in multi-unit building mailrooms, where I suspect the only thing keeping people from uncontrollably littering all over the place is the fact that the people actually *live* there, and may care about its appearance by virtue of that fact, while I can imagine that people in the places that are further away from a community mailbox are less likely to care about keeping up its appearance of the community mailbox than those that happen to live much closer to it, so the problem is not self-policing as it would be where everyone's mailbox is on their own personal property (rental housing notwithstanding).
I can also see that some people, especially those that might live near the other end of the block from where the community mailbox is, would lazily just get in their car to drive down the block to get their mail. Especially in inclement weather, increasing pollution and just generally wasting fuel.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I never understood the need to get, and pay for, door to door mail service 6 days a week. I'd happily keep door to door mail service (mailing a letter from my home to someone across the country for roughly 50 cents is pretty great).
As less and less comes through the mail, why not keep up the nice service, but make it like the garbage? They work 5-6 days a week, the post office could be open 6 days a week, but they only come to any given house once or twice a week. that way, you could have far less fuel, mail carriers, etc, you could still drop mail in a streetside mailbox or a post office if you wanted it to get picked up faster, but you'd only have your incoming mail dropped off 1-2 x per week.
this seems like a HUGE savings, that wouldn't really slow mail down that much, as the sorting and long distance trucking could keep going 6 days a week. You'd take out most of the cost, while taking out perhaps 10% of the utility.
you could also choose to have higher service for businesses (either every address in a certain district gets more frequent service) or that any address can choose to pay extra ($20/month?) for "daily" pickup/dropoff service and everyone else can choose to go to the 1-2x per week.
I dunno, with this whole "robots are going to make everyone unemployed" thing, conventional mail delivery seems like an obvious way to keep people busy. Postal service should be a basic government service. It's even in the US Constitution (versus the ATF or FBI or TSA). It's the communications method of last resort for locations that may otherwise be unreachable.
People sadly don't fully appreciate that.
People need to be such stinking cheapskates, especially the ones that want socialized medicine.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.